Lingering
by RhiannonWrites
Summary: A short ficlet about the madness of loving House, told from three points of view. House/Cameron, House/Wilson, Cameron/Wilson. Nothing explicit, but rated for language and sexual suggestiveness. My first House fiction, written in the last few hours. Enjoy


Author's Note: My first "House" fiction. I am a huge fan of Hugh Laurie, and a big fan of the show. Like always, I am a few seasons behind, so this little ficlet has no spoilers whatsoever. It revolves around the madness that is loving House, from three points of view. I hope you enjoy.

Disclaimer: If I owned House, you all would be sad, because I would never let Hugh Laurie out of my apartment.

* * *

_-cameron-_

I want to touch him, but I can't. And it's not for the reasons you think.

Sure, he pushes me away with his eyes and his words and even sometimes his hands, but rejection has never stopped me. Pain has never deterred me. He's right, in a way: if he responded to me, I might not know what to do with myself; if he loved me, I might not be able to love him any longer. I need, and I love to be needed, but more than anything, I like to be in pain.

Does he even realize how alike we are?

I don't think he has quite hit the nail on the head, just yet. He thinks I'm attracted to broken, to damaged, and he's right. But not because I like to fix, or because I only feel whole when someone else is dependent on me.

No one hurts you better than the broken.

So I love him, and I hate him, and I need him, because he hurts me so perfectly. But I can't touch him, because there's someone in the way.

Who would have thought I'd be stymied by Boy Wonder Oncologist?

House has made me bitter, has made me cold. Wilson has made me hateful. He keeps me from the one thing that might make me happy again, might make me feel again. It might be fucked up and insane, but I want to be close to all that brilliance, all that anguish, all that sarcasm and anger and heat. House is screwed up, but in a passionate way, and all I want is to be within reach when that passion surfaces.

But I never am.

He is.

I watch them talk, argue, stare at each other in silence. And I want to scream until someone, anyone, hears me at last. This is not the way it is supposed to be. It is possibly the most painful way to remain unrequited. If he needed to be with Stacy, even with Cuddy, I could accept it. But his hand lingers just a little too long on Wilson's door, his eyes just a second too long on his face. And the taste of the lingering is bitter.

_-wilson-_

She never goes away. And it's starting to drive me crazy.

She is beautiful, and intelligent, and young. She has her entire life ahead of her, and she's made the absolutely ridiculous decision to fall in love with House. I want to shake her; I want to slap her; I want to hold her until she cries all the love away.

He is making her into something horrible, a twisted caricature of the woman I met a few years ago. Her open eyes have dulled into suspicion and pain—her beautiful smile is almost always absent. I can see her dying a little, day by day, every time her eyes dart to his and he is sneering…every time she asks a question and he shoots her down with derision…every time she opens her heart to him and he kicks it like a helpless puppy.

He's an ass. And she's a fool.

She has taken to showing up in the oddest places. We are having lunch—House happily chewing on something from my plate—and her eyes are burning into us from across the room before she spins on her heel and disappears. I step out onto my balcony for a breath of air, and he is there…and she is there, lingering in his office, her eyes dark and narrowed, her lips tight.

If I thought there was any way to reach her, to pull her away from the brink of this madness, I would take her away myself. I would seduce her—it is one thing I am absolutely certain I am good at—and redirect her love. She could live through being loved and left by me. She will never survive him.

But it is not on my face, on my body, that her eyes linger. It is always on him. She will never give up, never let go, because the damage that makes him brilliant and impossible are what draw her inexplicably and inescapably to him. I cannot compete with that, not even to save her. I cannot even draw her eyes away when I cross her path.

Her eyes never linger on me.

_-house-_

Do they think I'm a moron?

She watches me, he watches her. He watches me. She watches him. Everybody acts like there aren't _dying_ people in this goddamn hospital, like it's just doctor-watching hour. I want to throw binoculars at their twisted little heads and tell them to look real hard and see if they can find a patient's chart with their super-powered eyeballs, because staring at each other is not an HMO-approved method of treating patients.

I know what Jimmy and my little ball of fluff are thinking. _Oh, House is so amazing, why won't he _**love** _me?_ And it makes me want to vomit. Sure, Cameron's a hot piece of ass, but all that clinginess has me smothering from across the hospital, never mind wrapped around each other on the same piece of furniture. And Wilson drinks up neediness and pain like it's his morning smoothie. _My_ morning smoothie has scotch and Vicodin in it, thank you very much, and it does not make me into a nine-year-old girl.

So they want me, they need me, they can't live without me. Flattering, but idiotic. Wilson would be better off if he realized that I'm never going to talk about it—whatever _it_ is—and I'm never going to share my feelings or come to my senses or repent of my evil ways. I am who I am, and I think he is only my friend to save me from myself. But on the nights when he won't stop _looking_ at me, like I'm a pickle-less Reuben he wants to devour, I shudder inside and fight down the urge to tell him there's a dozen drug-addicted hookers a few miles away that I could introduce him to. That way, he can save someone and have the slimmest possibility of a good fuck, all in one night.

Suffice it to say, the road to _that_ happy ending doesn't end at my place.

And my sweet, sweet Cameron…she thinks she has me all figured out. And she thinks I'm completely in the dark when it comes to who she really is. Women always think they're a bigger mystery than they really are; it's the lie they tell themselves when men fuck them and leave them. _He just didn't get me; I'm too complicated for someone so stupid and immature_. No, you're just really hot and really boring.

Cameron thinks I'm the broken man who will hurt her so good on her path to self-destruction. Except she would never phrase it that way, because she has no idea how self-destructive she is. Who but a self-loathing masochist would chase endlessly after a bitter cripple more interested in a bottle of pills than nailing her sweet ass? But she probably convinces herself that she wants to take care of me, that she wants to be there for me. And if she realizes that she craves the pain, she probably has no idea why.

But I know, because I am just _that_ good.

She wants to hurt because she hates herself, because she's feels guilty for being imperfect. And trust me, I'm trying to cure her of that, but it's hard when her eyes linger on me so lovingly. I want to kiss the love off her face until she's crying from the pain of my teeth on her lips; I want to spank the desire out of her until she's writhing and weeping across my knees, and not in the happy _do me now_ way. Well, maybe a little, cause who doesn't get distracted by _that_ image? But mostly, I want to hurt her until she realizes that pain is not really what she wants. What she wants is absolution, and I'm sure as hell not giving it to her. My office is not a confessional.

I think she might hate Wilson. I think he might want her. Not surprising; she is being thwarted, and he is distracted by anything with tits. Funny, cause I left my good bra in the wash. I just wish they would stop looking at each other, stop looking at me.

It's about time they started looking at themselves.

But what fun would that be?

FIN


End file.
